Wow, so this domestic thing. People do this every day? I’ve been spending the last 3 days predominantly on housework, and I’m definitely over it. Still, the house is clean and tidy for Christmas, we’re way better organised than we were last year, and apart from the tree randomly falling over and the second batch of shortbread being sniffed at suspiciously by my daughter, there have been no catastrophes.

(ah, the gingerbread house fail of… too many years to count, ahh the Christmas I was 8 months pregnant and decided to make my own puddings but in my exuberance failed to read the recipe and ended up going to bed while my honey stayed up until 1am watching a boiling pot… ahh)

The guest room is really pretty, though, and I’m leaving in under an hour to pick up anything (apart from maybe paper towels, grumble mumble) which means for once I can have a relaxing Christmas Eve. Oh, and my obsessive podcast-habit means that from now on, baking shortbread and gingerbread daleks will always remind me of the Radio Free Skaro boys.

I’ve done ridiculously well with gifts received already this year. The latest is the most beautiful leather-cover edition of Room with a View, a book I love greatly, and have been meaning to replace my battered orange paperback with a shiny new orange paper back for some time.

I can’t tell you how gorgeous this book is – not only lovely in its own right, but wrapped in Penguin-stamped tissue paper and placed in an elegant cardboard book. It’s a lovely object I can’t stop looking at and, oh yes, I’ll be re-reading this book very soon. How can I not?

It occurs to me that this was possibly the last beloved classic novel that I didn’t have a really nice edition of – a friend once gifted me with a gorgeous set of ancient hardback copies of The Forsyte Saga that he found in an aunt’s attic, I have a lovely old green edition of Wuthering Heights (and matching Jane Eyre, bah, but I keep it cos it matches) that dates from my mother’s brief ‘old books’ hobby phase, and I bought myself a proper hardback of Pride & Prejudice from a uni bookshop. Now Room with a View.

Yep, those are the important ones. Which books do you love so much that, even if you already have a copy, a lovely hardback edition would be an awesome present for you?

Tags: christmas, presents, reading